The World's Biggest Above Ground Cemetary

That's what they call the Gold Coast.

And that's where we've spent the past week, holidaying up a storm and managing to avoid both retirees and Schoolies.

There were three of us families staying at Treasure Island (arrghhh, me hearties) - it sounds much more glamarous than it actually is. What it is is a Big4 Caravan Park which also has lots of very comfortable "cabins", ours was actually a two storey, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house - plenty of room for 4 adults and 4 kids (our other friends had their own cabin as they have 3 kids). Our cabins were situated around "our own" pool and bbq area, which was really nice and mostly we had the pool to our selves. Another family have their own holiday apartment on the Gold Coast and we spent a couple of days with them too. So on Monday night there were 17 of us at dinner.

These families are our fabulous holiday buddies. We went to Fiji with them last year and had a ball. We all have adopted children and know each other through our adoption playgroup. The kids have virtually grown up together. Each family has an older boy (our Will being the oldest and the others are 8 and 9 years old) and then younger girls (around 4 and 5 years of age) like our Marianna. Then there is poor little J who is a 4 year old boy and a bit of ring in. Anyway, they are all the best of friends and go crazy together on holidays; watching them bond is beautiful.

It was a wonderful family holiday. The dads took the big boys to Wet'n'Wild on the Monday (where they had an asbolute blast), leaving us girls to hang by the pool with the little ones. Tuesday was Golf Day for the dads (out of 40kg baggage allowance for our family 17.7kg was Jay's golf bag, sheesh!) - and may I take this opportunity to congratulate my dear husband for winning the Cup (he is so horribly pleased with himself it's a little bit scary). Again us girls spent the day hanging out with the kids by the pool. It's a hard job but someone has to do it.

Wednesday was DreamWorld day and Thursday was MovieWorld day. For someone who isn't into the big, scary, spin-you-round, spin-you-upside-down rides I just love those theme parks. We managed to fill each day from opening to closing time and could have spent a couple more hours at each park. They are just so much fun. I love the feel of these places. I especially love the sets and look of MovieWorld.

There are great rides for big and little kids, there are shows (I really enjoyed the Stunt Driving show at MW), there are animals (like the beautiful tigers at DW). Too much fun to have in one day!

Our darling Will, who is generally an absolute chicken when it comes to rides, even went on the Road Runner Roller Coaster at MW about 15 times. We couldn't believe it. Never say never, I say. Speaking of miracles, even I went on a small roller coaster at DW (it was scary, but really fun!).

The good thing about going with a group of friends is there is always someone to go on a ride with you, always someone to take a child to the toilet or wait with yours while you go, always an extra set of eyes to watch the kids, always someone to share a bag of fairy floss with.

I could go on and on about how much fun the theme parks were but all I can say is they were awesome. If you're going to go I recommend going outside of school holidays and going during the week (not the weekend). We had very small crowds and didn't need to wait for any ride (occassionally just a few minutes). The kids were able to go on a ride and then run around and get straight back onto it.

Friday was again a rest day, which involved yet more hanging out by the pool. Saturday morning we packed up and headed to the airport, just making our plane. I was exhausted Saturday night (after partially unpacking, doing some laundry and going out to do the grocery shopping).

I need a holiday after our holiday.